The Monsters of the North
by Paradoxal Reality
Summary: My mother told me of them, before she died. "There are monsters", she whispered, "here in the far north." Spoilers for the movie. Do those still count as spoilers this long after release?
1. Chapter 1

AN: Spoilers for the end of the movie.

----

My mother told me of them, before she died. "There are monsters", she whispered, "here in the far north."

She drew me close, comforting me, before telling me of the horrible sounds they made. "Their screeches can deafen you before you know what's happened," she said. "They attack in swarms, trying to single out the weakest." Her green eyes, the same shade as mine, bored into me with concern and caught me close. "Never," she whispered, "Never be the weakest."

I tried to hold my head up proudly at that. Weakest, she'd said, not smallest.

But still, to be small is to be weak, and to be small and be of our kind is to be all the weaker for it. I lowered my head and sighed, knowing that while I might not be the smallest, and might not be the weakest, I definitely was small and weak. "If all else fails," Mother smiled, acknowledging my discomfort, "Hide, and hope that they don't find you."

I was excited to go out on my first night watch, alongside her. "Watch closely, my son," mother whispered, as we crouched on the hillside, overlooking the flock of sheep. I huddled close to her side, and as small as I was, I took pains to make myself smaller. Even by her side, I no longer felt safe. Things were lurking in the darkness. Things that creeped through the shadows, that shot through the air, things that I had no name for other than fear.

"Be wary," mother repeated, nudging me in the side. I glanced up at her, standing proudly on the hill, dissecting the battlefield with her gaze. Her battlescars were many, and out of all our settlement it was she who held the title of 'Master of Beasts'. She never missed a kill, never let herself be seen until it was too late for her foe. There was no creature, no monster, no dragon who could stand long under her deadly gaze.

Her eyes and mine, she often said, were the same. There was magic, she often told me, in those eyes. They were eyes that caught and held, that searched out and revealed secrets. Whereas my father's eyes, the color of the disquiet sea, pierced and cut; my mother's eyes made you captive. It was those eyes, she even confided in me one night as we watched over our tiny settlement, that had brought my father to her. The soul breathes through the eyes, she said, and my father would grumble and shake his great head at what he called "excessive mysticism". In any case, once her eyes had you, you were not free unless it was by her will. Some of the elders said that was the secret of how she slew so many of the monsters that hid among the caves and the shadows.

"The large ones will charge you," Mother continued the lesson, nodding at a freshly-erupted fracas in the pasture below. Livestock scattered as the monsters attacked. "The small ones will corral you," she explained, and I caught sight of a number of the hideous host, scampering to corner one of our warriors who'd strayed too far. "But there is one worse than either of those." Mother sighed, and as she turned her face towards me, the moon and belching flames from below framed it with a terrible, beautiful light. Somewhere between ice and fire, life and death, her eyes- the eyes that we shared- catching and holding me still.

"The.. middle-sized ones?" I ventured, only to be rewarded with a soft bark of amusement.

"No, dear one," Mother responded, "The worst of them all is the one that you never see. The one you never hear. Because that is the one who will catch you, and it will pull your throat out. And then it will take you back to their nest and they will eat you up."

I shivered against her, dumbstruck at the very idea.

"They are monsters," she reminded me, "it is all they know how to do. They attack and feast on the spoils, and when they are done they look for something new to attack so that they may feast again."

"Monsters," I whispered, shuddering into her side.

"Monsters," she confirmed, resting her head gently on top of mine as the field below blazed with death and fire and unholy sounds.

It wasn't long after that that my mother didn't come home. The stormy season had come early, and our warriors were lost in the torrential rage of sky and sea. I sat up for three days watching, waiting, barely moving from the spot I'd always waited for her in. 'Surely,' I thought, 'She has been delayed. Surely the seas were too rough, the winds were too high, the night was too dark... Surely she must come home, though.'

But she didn't come home. Not for three days. Not even for five. On the sixth day my father spat a curse to the winds that roared, and the sea that foamed, and the monsters that were always, always roving about. "Mark this day," my father told me, "It will be the last day you spend as a child." I cringed back from him, stung by the words. He had never approved of what he called mother's "coddling" of me.

"From this day forth," he said, "You will learn what you are, and what you have to be. You will stand up and be one of us. We all work together, that is the way of life here."

"But," I protested, my voice betraying my early adolescence, "Why don't we just leave? If life is so hard here, why don't we go over the sea and find someplace better? Someplace where Aegir calms the sea instead of stirring it to froth? Someplace where Hraesvelg's children sigh instead of rage? Someplace where there are no monsters?"

My father turned slowly to look at me, with his eyes like the turbid sea. "My son," he rumbled, sounding more sad than angry, "There are monsters everywhere. There will always be monsters, until Odin falls and all the land slides beneath the waves. And even then, as the world begins anew, the monsters will still exist. One cannot hide from monsters," he said, letting his age-dulled teeth slide into view before snapping them once for emphasis. "One can only eat them before they eat us first."

With that, he spread his aged wings and flew out into the darkening sky, following the others of our den. We were the only ones left, the Nightfury, the immaculate consummation of Nott's grace personified and Mjollnir's ferocious rage, blessed by Odin. Far below, the immense terrible Red Death grumbled in discontent, and I hurried to follow the hunting party into the descending twilight.

There were monsters everywhere, Father said. I could tell by the wary look in his eyes though, the one that worried him the most was the one that we tried to keep contented under our very feet.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Yeah, I know I previously marked this as complete but this has been sitting on my computer begging to be added. Enjoy!

* * *

It is a fact of life; there are monsters everywhere.

When I was a youngster, my mother told me much about them. Sometimes I think that she delighted in telling me those stories, tales that she surely knew scared me. I would huddle against her warm side, staring up at her with wide eyes as she told me accounts of the horrible things that lurked, just waiting for a nice tidbit like me to wander too close.

The monsters frightened me, they thrilled me, and I would try with all my might not to squeal in fear as she leaned in close to deliver some terrible, gruesome detail.

Through my mother, I learned of their terrifying ways before I ever took my first step. Through my father, who was an intimidating presence in his own right, I learned that the tales she told me were true.

At first, my mind rebelled and protested that they were too horrifying to be true! But they were also too horrifying to be made up. The survivors who sometimes limped home to die slow, agonizing, and thorougly inglorious deaths of fleshrot and disease proved that throughly. These were not the deaths that our fiercest ones dreamed and sang of, but still they were ready, night after night, to lay their lives on the line in our struggle for life.

And struggle we do, gloriously. At least, that is how those older than I tell it as we battle the monsters, and the climate here in the far north, beyond where most of our kind dare. And we, here on this tiny island, continue to battle and persevere.

Partially, it is because we must fight the monsters to survive. And partially, it's because our kind love living best when survival is an adversary to be overcome. An obstacle is only an obstacle until you beat it's head into the ground, sever that from the body, and set the whole thing on fire. At least, that's what one of my father's friends used to say, right up until the night when one of those horrible, misshapen beasts sliced him in half as he sang a victory song over one of it's kin.

I think that was when I realized, I am not completely like the others of my kind. Unlike them, I was actually afraid of the monsters. They did not fill me with joy, or enrapture me with the desire to rend and destroy, as they seemed to do to the others. They only filled me with dread, and the wish to flee far and away from them.

My mother died when I was still small, her warm light snuffed out and gone. No longer would she tell me stories, no longer would she sing me songs. No longer would she shield me from my father.

My father, from the time of my first memory, always seemed vaguely disappointed. The place where we lived was inhospitable. The food we ate was sparse. The foes we faced, in our desperate bid for sustinence and survival were fierce. Our little family, small to begin with, was made smaller by the gaping absense of my mother. For all his efforts, our settlement was cranky, full of strife, and discontent.

But none of those things seemed to disappoint him as much as I did.

My father, you must understand, was an impressive, daunting figure. The air shook with the force of his raised voice. His fierceness was known to be second only to the unquestioned force of nature known as my mother's rarely-seen rage, which was spoken of in whispers even after her death by those around us.

My father, alone now, bore the responsibility for the safety of all our warriors. It was he who led every expedition from the craggy rocks that marked the small but tenacious perch our kind held. It was he who held back, scanning every battlefield for the monsters who would attack us. It was he, my father, a little bit past his prime and a lot past his patience, who would charge in and attempt to give cover or aid to those who needed it during those battles. And as I said, he was forced now to do it alone.

My father might be a great warrior, whose strength was unrivaled even among our kind and all who had heard of us, but even he could not be in many places at once.

He needed an heir. He needed a successor. He needed a fierce warrior he could mold in his own image, as his father had shaped him and as his father had shaped him, all the way back up our prestigious line to the first who'd borne our great name.

What he got was me.

As a newborn, I was small, and sickly. My father consulted the advice of the elders, who looked me over as one might examine a curious new insect. They told him to make certain I was fed well, a feat not easily managed in our ill-supplied little home, and I would be fine. My father, somehow, made it happen. My health recovered, but I was still small.

At the time my mother died, I was still small for my age. My father, whose repeated entreaties to the elders had brought many suggestions but no results, was quite sullen whenever he spoke to me or of me. His sharp, piercing eyes almost seemed to cut me apart, picking out every detail of what was wrong with me.

I was too small, too weak, too hesitant, too distractable, and my father, my great father, who was known as the Great Defender; the one who stared death in the face night after night and laughed, was aging faster than ever, slowly being killed by the crushing disappointment that was me. And as hard as I tried, as earnestly as I attempted to imitate him, I did not seem to be shaping up as a great warrior of my parents' ability.

"One day", he told me as the evening sky darkened, lighting the stony ground of our home in deepening color, "You will face me in combat. On that day, you must fight for my position. You must be strong enough, fast enough, agile enough to defeat me unquestionably and take my place."

"But I can't," I whispered, eyes staring hopelessly at the ground.

"I know," he replied, the deep rumble of his voice shaking my very bones, "but you must still do so."

"But I can't," I repeated, head upraised, eyes pleading for him to see that he asked the impossible.

His stormy eyes did not hesitate to meet mine, and I ducked my head slightly in subconscious respect for his great might. Those cutting eyes of his saw, and narrowed. Under their scrutiny, I fought not to squirm and shy away. To do so was to show unforgivable weakness.

"You must not be so weak," he chided, and I fought with every fiber of my being to meet his gaze once more. Before I knew what was happening, his tremendous bulk had pinned me to the rocky ground, and held me there without effort.

"You must NOT be so weak," he growled, and I could see the quiet desperation in his restless eyes. His fear, which frightened me far worse than his rage ever had, visible for the first time that I could recall in my life. "My son, you cannot be weak. ALL of us will one day depend on you. If you are weak, we will all be devoured, one by one until there are none of us left."

What could I do? What could I say? That I was not him was apparent, everyone remarked on it when he was out of earshot. That I was not my mother was as obvious, and everyone commented upon that as well. How could I ever hope to take my father's place? How could I possibly hope to measure up, in even a small way, to the legacy of my parents? How could I face the monsters when I could not even meet my father's deathly gaze?

"Those.. creatures," I fought not to stammer, battling with my own voice to sound pensive instead of panicked as I tried not to think of the hideous tales my mother had filled my head with, of the monsters that killed in the dark. "Can they really be defeated? Can we actually win against them?"

My father's expression changed, and I could see the fire return to his eyes. "They can be," he replied, fierce determination now marking his features. "They are mortal, as we are mortal. They can be killed, and they can die. Our kind know this, and their kind know this, and we will fight until the last of them fall." I watched, awed, as Sol's descent backlit my father in a glorious inferno of colored light.

"You, my son," Stoick the Vast commanded, looking as imposing in my eyes as Odin himself, "WILL become a viking. You will do so, and fulfill your destiny as my heir. You will do so, and lead Berk to glory."

I felt myself nodding in agreement. Somehow, I had to learn how to kill the monsters.

After all, it was my duty.


End file.
